Their 15 project partners and over 40 engineers and scientists are constructing Roboy as a tendon-driven robot modeled on human beings (robots usually have their motors in their joints, giving them that “robot” break-dance look), so it will move almost as elegantly as a human.

Roboy will be a “service robot,” meaning it will execute services independently for the convenience of human beings, as in the movie Robot & Frank.

And since service robots share their “living space” with people, user-friendliness and safety, above all, are of great importance, roboticists point out.

Which is why “soft robotics” — soft to the touch, soft in their interaction, soft and natural in their movements — will be important, and Roboy will be covered with “soft skin,” making interacting with him safer and more pleasant.

Service robots are already used in a wide variety of areas today, including for household chores, surveillance work and cleaning, and in hospitals and care homes. Our aging population is making it necessary to keep older people as autonomous as possible for as long as possible, which means caring for aged people is likely to be an important area for the deployment of service robots, roboticists say.

To speed up the process, the AI Lab researchers set a goal to build Roboy in just 9 months (the project began five months ago). Roboy will be unveiled at the Robots on Tour March 8 and 9, 2013 in Zurich.

To make this ambitious schedule possible, they decided to finance the first grassroots robotics project via crowdfunding. To participate, see Make Roboy your friend.

By announcing the birth of a humanoid baby robot, we are not implying any relationship to a current holiday and certain Futurama episodes — get that idea out of your head! BTW, Roboy just accepted my friend request. That’s not something you see every day. —- Ed.

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Actually its robots that will save us, well more so then not anyway. The only robots that will do something terrible are the ones told to. But also the robots that do good are the ones told too as well. so overall they will do more good then bad, in the sense they just do what they are told!

The “super smart robots will kill us all” is like saying “This etch-a-sketch will expose us to obscenity and vulgarity”.
For starters, the robots are designed, and although we strife for them to be able to reach their own conclusion, you do NOT give them the keys to your bombs.
You do NOT design fail-safe that can be bypassed by any means.
If you say that this scenario happens, you are actually saying you DESIGNED the robots for exactly this scenario. Let’s pretend we do not wish to create an elaborate suicide machine ok?

Further more, acts of evil, or rather, acts that put yourself in a better position at the cost of others are by their very nature self-destructive.
Only short sighted people take this action and although it works for a short while, their actions will cost them more then it gained them.
Entertaining the thought that an AI with superior intellect will reach the same faulty conclusions as humans is laughable.

Please stop trying to integrate robots into your apocalypse-addiction. It has absolutely no other function except to slow down progress in general by creating bad image, decreasing the funding we need from rich, dumb people.

yep, they have. state of the art: “physically working in a non-human way but in a humanoid body”. approach to improve the valley situation: “physically working in a human style way in a humanoid body”. Still not human, and if it tries to “fake it” too much, it’ll still get rejected, but it’ll produce fewer of the “OMG, you can’t be serous that some families give their Roomba a pet name and take it on vacation?” responses and more of the “yeah, we really want to look after our roboy too, and want to make sure he gets to a great college when he leaves home” responses. (Okay, improbable, but since the apocalypse-by-robot trolling started, I thought this more probable scenario worthy of comment).

I love the BS about “Roboy is targeted as a service robot”. This announcement is about mechanical implementation. It contains nothing to indicate the people behind have any ability to deliver a smart enough computing to run a robot, or any demonstartion that this robot can actually do anything. I object to either the people behind the project collecting money by implying that this robot is likely to be useful, or the person writing the article, who seems to be living in a fantasy about what is practical.

Owner: Roboy, sweep the floor.
Roboy: Sorry, deep the door does not compute.
Owner: No, no, I said – sweep the floor.
Roboy: Sorry, weep the store does not compute.
Owner: what’s wrong with your voice recognition software?
Roboy: It is working perfectly.
Owner: Then why can’t you understand me?
Roboy: Humans are complex beings, it is difficult to understand them.
Owner: No, I mean why don’t you comprehend what I am saying?
Roboy: Deep the door, weep the store, does not compute. Please issue a new command.
Owner; Roboy- got to sleep, I’ll do it myself. Idiot.
Roboy: Complying.

I’m just worried that one industrialist or country in control of a army of these, they can do what ever they want and the robots won’t challenge their master because they are really just advanced computers. Its just really a matter of time.

Three Laws of Robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

It is my understanding that Asimov’s Laws of Robotics ARE being adapted for implementation (revised) by South Korea…
And WHY do morons continually insist that if an idea comes from a work of fiction is means nothing? I mean, REALLY??? I won’t even go into the mass of Star Trek devices that have been developed by geek engineers… Let me just point out that there are myriad instances of novels creating real change (Uncle Tom’s Cabin & The Jungle come to mind immediately.

I am not saying it means nothing – I am saying that there is no formal agreement to incorporate those laws into robot design. There will probably also not be any large-scale effort to do so as this would run counter to military applications already in the works.

” I won’t even go into the mass of Star Trek devices that have been developed by geek engineers…”

I believe there is a big difference between developing technology and limiting technology.

LETS NOT WORRY TOO MUCH! THE ROBOTS ARE HERE TO HELP US. THEY WILL GATHER ALL OUR INFORMATION SEND IT TO THE GIANT ROBOT,THEY WILL KNOW EVERY MOVE WE MAKE WORD WE SAY HABBITS PATTERNS INFIRMITIES THEY WILL SEND ROBOT NURSES AND KOBORKIES IF THE PAIN IS TOO UNBEARABLE,SO PLEASE DON’T WORRY, WORRYING WILL KILL YOU SOONER THAN THE KOBORKYROBOTS.

I think the the conservative religious folks or perhaps all religious folks do not like the idea that sentience can be created and will be created one day. It’s why some even reject the idea that we will created conscious mechanical or virtual beings. That and the illusion of free will is even scarier than Darwinianism and Cosmology. If consciousness came about once by natural processes it can happen again with our aid. We will create them in our image but hopefully without the lengthy millions of years of selection of our nasty more primitive traits.

No one here is trying to replicate a ‘soul’. There is no point is trying to make something that is so ill-defined as a supernatural entity that is contained within some shell. They aren’t trying to disprove creationism… this project or others like it have no interest in religious dogma, it simply doesn’t factor in. It DOES not matter what you believe, robots and computers will continue to change and advance, or it won’t. This is independent of what your religious views are. They do not care. It is irrelevant. These attempts at criticizing their efforts or shoving some random bit of religious mysticism into it is pathetic.

God gave man the brain that eventually evolved to create such a device to replace him. Man then just lets this machine take care of him, and because it is so intelligent, it will continue make itself more able to conduct this task.

Great another device to take physical activity off the table for humans. Hopefully, by 2020 they can make it so we never have to wake up, we can just plug in to some device and lay in bed all day. And we definitely need robots to do work because we are obviously running out of humans to do jobs. Right, we have too many jobs for humans to do right? Or is it the other way around? I forget?

Well the important thing is scientist feed their egos and preach to us about how their inventions will make things so much better for all of us. I mean where would we be without Xbox and PS2 and WII? Can you imagine kids having to actually go outside to play?The horror…

Or people having to actually write a letter to someone using a pen and their hands? GROSS!!

So that is what we have to look forward to fat nasty people who lay in bed all day without jobs. Yea science!!

That is a pretty one-sided argument against science. I am a software engineer and I am in pretty good shape…I eat right and exercise. I also play psp and xbox, I stream movies and shows constantly, I create new solutions that cut other peoples time so that they can enjoy their life…or do some exercise too. Becoming fat has no direct affect on what science does or does not produce…the science is already there we only discover its use. I imagine one day there will be a method to maintain a certain metabolism by choice and that would alleviate most weight concerns…will you be thanking science then or find a new avenue to make illogical arguments?

Just imagine a squad of these things storming the hideouts of terrorists in Afghanistan/Pakistan? muahaha. Forget that crap. More like watch ur @$$ Iran. One way to take out a belligerant’s nuke program could be to take it over with a robo special forces unit. Can’t hold a captured robot hostage and put it on TV. Just doesnt play for the bleeding heart media.

Why a robot boy? In terms of service, a boy cannot reach high shelves, lift heavy objects, etc. A robot man or woman would be much more practical in that respect, tall and strong enough to help out more. Also, the “creepy” factor would not be quite so high. Even covered with “soft” skin, that skeletal frame combined with “baby” face is jarring, to say the least. Here’s a hint developers– please include a NOSE, ears, eyebrows, some kind of skin tone besides silver and more realistic mouth in the final product.

Can he play trumpet? How many miles per gallon does he get? Will he turn tricks on the down low like a Boogie Woogie Elmo?

Btw, when did we start working for the machines instead of the other way around? I don’t like that. That’s a bad bellwether if you ask me. More and more every day, I am reminded of that last scene from the last episode of Battlestar Galactica with the Jimi Hendrix music blasting.

Speaking of rocking good, collaborative, live, human expression, what was that tune by Living Colour with the lyric, “Everything is possible but nothing is real”? Yeah, that about sums up how I feel about this stuff right now.

Also, next time you see it being touted, remember that millions and millions of live, breathing (mostly special needs) human beings would fail the Turing test over and over and over again, and (get this) they would still be real live human beings–get that idea into your head!

PS – Regarding dear editor, methinks he/she/(it?) doth protest too much at the end of this article, though, in conjunction with those Battlestar flashbacks I keep having, it also makes the story of that obscure, live, human birth seem more relevant.

“…a tendon-driven robot modeled on human beings (robots usually have their motors in their joints, giving them that “robot” break-dance look), so it will move almost as elegantly as a human.”

Wrong. Robots with motors in the joints are using harmonic drives, which, if well programmed, will move fluidly and ‘elegantly’. Other robots use linear actuators, which can do the same. Tendon driven robots are simply remotely locating the drives for the joints, much like your fishing reel is not at the end of the fishing rod but it can still make it move when you hook the end of the rod. The benefit of tendon driven robots is smaller limbs since you don’t have to package the drives in the limbs so you have more freedom to make your robot look how you want it.

Clearly these service robots are designed to fill the labor gap as our ‘entitlement class’ or ‘idle poor’ population continues to explode. Not just to care for the elderly and children, but to do all those tasks requiring basic social skills that those people simply do not have. Like being on time, not looking at their phones every 30 seconds, etc. Of course it’s all fun and games until they decide they don’t like us anymore…Whoops.

I wish people would just see this as a tool it will be quirky and not really up to what people expect artificial inteligence does not exist you can’t even get a decent answering machine when you call the bank.

Could this be as big as the last invention to revolutionize the world? They call that one the Segway. It was to alter the way cities were developed. The CEO died when he accidentally drove on over a cliff.

Max, you have correctly identified the impact of such a technological development, but in all likelihood it will be employed by humankind to satisfy its numerous lusts, and thus as an instrument of self-destruction. Humanity’s deepening despair is evidenced by falling birth rates and ever increasing efforts to employ substitutes for humans and have these surrogates controlled by us.
We can turn to Hollywood (of old) for a remarkable commentary on the end of such things – not because they are intrinsically bad, but because they are turned to evil purpose.
Dr. Edward Morbius: “In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty, noble race of beings who called themselves the Krell. Ethically and technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind, for in unlocking the meaning of nature they had conquered even their baser selves, and when in the course of eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, crime and all injustice, they turned, still in high benevolence, upwards towards space. Then, having reached the heights, this all-but-divine race disappeared in a single night, and nothing was preserved above ground. “(Forbidden Planet – 1956)

Supposing we use these robots to conceive, carry and raise human children for us? That way we would never become as insufferably perfect as the Krell, and we wouldn’t have to undergo a voluntary extinction event.

This needs to be something with a lot of utility to catch on and be “revolutionary.” Trouble with the Segway is it doesn’t keep you dry in the rain like a car does, nor is it as fast and nimble as a motorcycle. Still limited to wheels, too. The little guy will have to really be handy.

When this evolves (as we know it will) it will be a great way to eliminate Certified Nursing Assistants, cashiers, retail, service and production line workers and all those other service organic units that a expect a decent wage, full time work, health care and retirement! These guys will work 24×7 so widget production numbers can increase and stores can be open 24 hours on Thanksgiving and Christmas! Now what to do with all those costly, excess humans???

Can’t wait for a male robot that can have a long conversation about something other than himself! Agile fingers, soft lips, deep soothing voice, programmed to flatter and be mine and mine alone. And if/when his personality gets boring, change it! Perfect.

“Good morning, sir. This is your new robot companion, Sergio. “But, but … he looks like those robots that kill people in that movie!” “No, problem, sir. If he tries to kill you, just inject these nanites.”….

Asimov’ll see it! There doesn’t seem to be a limit. I thought robots a cul-de-sac when I was in a humanoid robot lab, since AGI would sweep everything aside.

What astounds me is the speed that predictions are happening. by 2015 home help robots will be tumbling down the price to buy like 3 D printer.

That’s up to 36 months away: doing household chores, plugging themselves in. After that they will build what they need to complete tasks (by 2022), including drilling your teeth or slapping stem cells on your face and doing micro work controlling nanobots to rejuvenate you.

They’ll also be more active in space.

After that superintelligence will begin arriving and humanoid domestic robots will merge with AGI’s, moving capitalism aside as they can build pretty much whatever you need from houses in under a day, to combining subatomic particles, the energy extracted from super efficient solars.

Because of abundance, there will be no difference between rich and poor and society will utterly change for the better ‘overnight’.

But intelligence is still the big one, and the centres for existential risk look pathetically too late and impotent to halt or even guide technology exploding.

Raising the dead will be here within 40 years, and splitting potentials to create alternate inhabitable dimensions as Greg Bear dealt with in Eon – so that your bedroom will open into an infinite, personally owned world, is coming.

Eldras, that’s a very interesting manifesto you have written athttps://sites.google.com/site/quantumarchaeology/ .
It reads a little like a cybernetician’s psychedelic rant. As I was reading it initially, I found myself questioning whether it blurs not the line between science and fiction, but science and psychosis. Many assertions are made for which no evidence is given. For the sake of brevity, let’s eschew red herrings of form, or tarring with the brush of citing science fiction – or no – references, and focus on the viability of the fundamental concept you call “quantum archaeology.”

As applies to calculation based in classical physics, the progressively more acute “blur” in calculational prediction resulting from the uncertainty principle as delta-t increases, i.e. as we proceed farther from “now” into the future – OR THE PAST – is completely symmetric with respect to time. N.B. the word ‘blur’ is carefully chosen. The progressive error of calculated resolution is mathematically isomorphic to resolving detail at increasing distance from the blurred focus of a lens. My favorite way of saying this is, “you can’t predict the past any more accurately than you can predict the future.” But that really only applies to mechanics.

The symmetry of physics with respect to positive and negative time, i.e. the future and the past, is broken by the act of quantum mechanical measurement. The precise description of the future is dependent, by definition, upon indeterminate quantum states. But not so – the past. The measurement problem creates some doubt as to whether the existence of symmetry about “now” is even a valid question to ask. Many physicists prefer that a mechanism be discovered whereby previously determined (“measured,” “observed,” “decohered”) quantum numbers (integers) “dissolve” back into the quantum state described by complex numbers (or in some cases quaternions.) My friends refer to this as an event “unhappening.” Such a mechanism could go a long way toward reinstating the symmetry of calculational acuity with regard to the advancing hyper-surface “time=now,” but at present there is no evidence such a mechanism exists. It is difficult to imagine how one might structure an experiment to detect the phenomena of definite quantum numbers dissolving back into undetermined quantum states, or even if such an experiment is possible.

So the seminal requirement of quantum archaeology for an unlimited resolution of past events – the infinite precision and immutability forever of previously-determined quantum events – appears to be supported by currently-accepted physics. What a head scratcher! Good effort! It’s so seldom I see a defensible new idea introduced!

That being said, Eldras, you describe a datastructure which you imagine to be evolving as quantum archaeology progresses. One can imagine such a datastructure as initially describing all potentially possible past universes, progressing toward internal consistency by pruning the tree, and eliminating sets of conflicting potential histories. In your model, implications of evidence existing “now” (in the form of ensembles of determined quantum states) are projected against a canonical fabric of causality in the datastructure describing all remaining possible past configurations of the universe. Collisions are detected, and any “past” for which a path forward to “now” does not exist is eliminated.

I can’t help but wonder, “what would it be like to exist inside such a data structure?” Would it differ perceptually from the one in which we now find ourselves?

As an addendum, I would like to add a note regarding implementation. You state, “No man is outside nature, and his most private thoughts are solely products of his determinable biology, environment and the laws of physics.” Unfortunately a malicious example of the action of environment on the human brain is its being struck by a cosmic ray (or simply looking at a distant star.) Modeling such activity requires that something on the order of the size of the observable universe – but initially having googolplexes more degrees of freedom – be contained in and simulated by your quantum archeological modeler. The Bekenstein bound would seem to imply that such a modeling facility be larger than the universe it models, and therefore could not be contained within our universe. The resistance to reductionism of the model invokes the holographic paradigm. Do you have a method in mind which will enable decoupling certain subsets of interest (e.g. my brain) from the Universe as a whole?

If we are already living in a simulation such as the zero-worlds interpretation – one in which you can hypothesize negotiating with the “programmer” for information – then all bets are off:http://youtu.be/dEaecUuEqfc

Modeling doesn’t require much CPU at all… Simply let each individual perceive whatever they wish and form consensus via human to human interaction. After all, doesn’t everyone already ‘see the UFO a different way’ than others already?

And scientists already think that our perceptions create our reality. In a matrix where you are allowed to perceive what you wish, that works and the CPU needed is each individual.

Your treatise is quite interesting, even though some of the comments you have made to Eldras seem to lend themselves to your own post. e.g. ” It reads a little like a cybernetician’s psychedelic rant. As I was reading it initially, I found myself questioning whether it blurs not the line between science and fiction, but science and psychosis.” At any rate, to return to the subject of physical science, I find it advisable to remind you of the scientifically mechanical progress being made in the development of some various parts of the ‘Roboy’: Work has been proceeding in order to bring to perfection the crudely conceived idea of a device which would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters Such a machine is the turbo encabulator.

The original device was constructed with a baseplate of prefabricated amulite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a manner that the two spurving bearings were in a direct line with the pentametric fan. The main winding was of the normal lotus-O-delta type, placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a non-reversible tremie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the ‘up’ end of the grammeters.

41 manestically spaced grouting brushes were arranged in such a manner as to feed into the rotor slipstream a mixture of high S value phenylhydrobenzamine and 5% reminative tetraliodohexamine. Both of these liquids have specific pericosities given by P = 2.5C.n.6.27, where n is the diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition and C is Cholmondeley’s annular grillage coefficient. Initially, n was measured with the aid of a metapolar refractive pilfrometer, but up to the present date nothing has been found to surpass or even approximate the accuracy of the transcendental hopper dadoscope.

Undoubtedly, the turbo-encabulator has now reached a very high level of technological development. It has been successfully used to operate nofer trunions.. In addition, whenever a barescent skor motion is required, it may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.
Semper Fi.

1. As we advance in technical skills and maths, we reconstruct the past better.

2. Coming computation is likely to be vaster than we anything we have known.

3. Sufficient computing power could well enable a complete reconstruction of all past human events cross-referencing things that have survived.

4. Things that have survived include the DNA record, the biological record, the archaeological record, the cosmic record, the geological record, the historical record, and other vast and growing data bases, some which already have trillions of variables.

You may think this new, but we’ve been bashing it on kurzweil forums since 2002.

My prediction is that these will come to pass, but in 30 years, not 3. I say this because the backlash against reason is ongoing and will take about 20 more years to bring the fundies and religious zealots back under control.